Prompt #6

This is the first couple pages of a story I started writing. It was originally intended to be a very short story, but my brain kept coming up with wonderful things to add and I got all caught up in what might end up being a much grander tale than originally intended. Then again, that would mean I need to actually continue writing, so we'll see. Fingers crossed. Also, any criticism or pointers or opinions would be welcomed and greatly appreciated.

The Good Life

(it's a working title for now)

“Hello, this is Ibrahim Ahmedani calling on behalf of Good Life Medical Insurance. May I please talk to Bettie Anderson?”

He sat and listened for a good long moment, but the only reply was a click followed by that repetitive beep; the one that let him know that Bettie would not be taking his survey. Ibrahim hung up the phone, only to pick it back up and try again and press 10 more buttons, hoping these ones might allow him some sort of human contact. After only a couple of rings, a gruff voice came through the phone. “Hello?”

He began, “Hello, this is Ibrahim Ahmedani calling on behalf of Good Life Medical Insurance, May I please talk to Janet Billings?”

“We’re already members of your insurance, but thanks.”

“Actually, I’m calling today on behalf of Good Life Medical Insurance to ask a few questions in order to provide you with…” cut off again by that beeping. He keyed the proper code into the computer then pressed enter. The top of the screen informed him that that had been his 200^th call of the day. He had been able to complete twenty-four customer service surveys. This was definitely nothing to frown at. Steve, in the cubicle next to his, had only completed fifteen so far, and Jen across the aisle had finished seventeen. No, it wasn’t the number of completed surveys that added to the growing pit in Ibrahim’s stomach; it was the number of calls. That “200” staring him in the face. Had he really spent the last five hours calling 200 people only to talk to twenty-four of them? And those twenty-four phone calls couldn’t even be considered conversations. He had very few moments when he got to speak with somebody on the phone and he spent them asking strange and awkward questions about the persons’ hygiene, diet, and medical history. It was all too much for him to think about at the moment. So he stood up and started to walk down the aisle toward the bathroom when he was stopped by an oddly excited blast to his ears. It seemed so out of place in this drab, grey world.

“Where are you going?” Jen asked, almost looking concerned.

“I’m gonna go take my break. Why?”

“Didn’t you already take a break?”

“No.” He said, a little aggravated that this was such a big deal to his coworker. Where did she get off policing him anyway? He never really had a problem with his colleagues, but this wasn’t the best day for him. He had just had an obnoxiously self-aware moment, and had to go shake that feeling otherwise he was not going to make it through the rest of the day. Suddenly it hit him. He had taken a half-hour lunch just before noon. He hadn’t had time to eat that morning before leaving for work, so he took an earlier lunch than usual. Somewhere between the constant repetition of the phone beeping and him reciting the same introduction over and over he had lost that lunch somewhere in his mind. This did not help his situation at all. He now felt the agony of what the early stages of depression must surely feel like, and now had no way of ridding himself of those feelings. Unless, he thought, I can piss them away. So he continued down the aisle.

He stood an easy two feet above the 4-foot cubicle walls. His suit hung handsomely on his thin body. It was a little large for him, but not so much that it looked ridiculous or anything. He bobbed across the sea of office workers; just a small brown buoy on the waves of business-appropriate hair and attire.

After the relief that comes with a much needed urination, Ibrahim washed his hands and checked his hair and his whole demeanor. It was as if this clean shaven, Indian man was staring at him with some sort of derision, laughing at his very existence. Then he realized that this was probably not a very healthy state of mind, so he splashed some water into his face, rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was just him. The same face as before but this time it wasn’t dripping with ridicule.

“Every journey begins with a single step.” He recited the same thing to himself every day. It wasn’t because he felt he belonged on some grand adventure, but something about this proverb always made him feel like there was something to look forward to in life. Like he could go somewhere beyond that stupid little cubicle and find some real sense of joy out of life. All he had to do was take that one step. But for now, let’s get through the rest of the day.  He turned off the sink and dried his hands. As he stepped through the door that lead back to the office he was greeted by an ear splitting crack so loud it seemed like his ear had split open. Dazed, he clutched his ears and felt something sticky and warm running down his fingers. He looked at his left hand, covered in blood. He panicked. What was happening? Where was everybody? Why does the office suddenly look like it had been completely ransacked? And most importantly, why was he being shot at? He started to run, but after only a few steps he heard another crack accompanied by an explosion of pain shooting through his right leg. He dropped. He was helpless. His vision faded. Am I dying?

---------------------------------

The warmth of a fire relaxed him, and the smell of cooking meat filled his nostrils. He felt a sense of comfort and…Wait, is that me!? His eyes flew open and he found himself falling from a small cot or makeshift bed of some sort. He let out a small and somewhat girlish shout. He was relieved to find that it was not his own flesh he smelled, but some sort of red meat cooking over a fire. It looked delicious and he was famished. He looked around and saw nobody. After waiting a minute or so, he decided it would be a shame to let such a tasty smelling morsel become dry and overcooked. He grabbed it from the spit over the fire and began to feast.

 As he satisfied the more urgent of his needs, he realized that there was now a whole new set of problems to work out. Where was he? How did he get there? Who built the fire? Had he actually been shot?  He looked down at his leg and saw it wrapped in what looked like strips of cloth torn from a t-shirt. He jammed his finger into the middle of the blood stain. A fire raged instantly from that one point on his thigh all the way down to his toes. Yes, he had really been shot. So who had dressed his wounds? Those and so many other questions rattled through his mind and he wasn’t sure where to start. He couldn’t focus on any one question long enough to find an answer. The panic started to build again and he found himself beginning to question his own sanity. Then he noticed something he hadn’t until now, or rather, someone.

A Double Whammy

I will be answering two prompts with this. Number six will be answered in a new post because apparently I can't create an attachment.

As for prompt 5, I would like to answer that one as well, because it seems like something I should be asking myself.


Part A:
I am a much larger and heavier person than most people I meet, yet I am fairly certain that I have biked farther than many of them.

I am one of the quietest people in your class, yet I am one of the loudest and possibly obnoxious people in my apartment.

I am completely comfortable talking with and befriending married women, but I can't ask a single girl for her number if my life depended on it.

I am a very smart young man, yet there are times I feel so confused that there is no way anybody could know how to help me.

I have friends that I would trust with my life and family that I trust even more than that, but I cannot allow any one person to know everything about me

I'm not sure how to explain these oddities, but I do know that they are a huge part of what makes me me. I don't point these out because I feel like it makes me sound intellectual or deep (heck, sometimes I am one of the shallowest people I know). These are all just interesting observations about myself that I have never really put together. When I see them all listed out like this I wonder if other people see the same things in themselves. I love the ideas I come up with but feel like I almost never can convey them in coherent words and sentences. That's where

Part B
comes in. I want to share my stories, and ideas and thoughts with so many people. So I need to work on it. I need to keep practicing and keep reading and build my vocabulary so that I can tell you guys and everybody else that I'm feeling ecstatic today rather than just saying I'm really happy I don't have work. I need to realize the importance of continuing with this hobby and see if I can't make it a career because in all honesty, I feel better today after writing a couple blog entries than I have in the last couple months.

#6, "Fall Fall Fall"

I don't know if this will go anywhere, but this is what I've been working on the last couple of days:

---

hold me down-- winter with her bitter gaze,

and all the shadows that surrounded

and the demons with their lingering arms

and all my sorrow with the lingering scars, leading me to fall-- fall-- fall

It's like-- coming out of my haze, to the rest of my days

feel the shimmering light cross the wicked tides

calm me down-- when i stumble over - lost and founds

the show and tells, I linger, like I 

love him again and again,

like i'd die to be weightless again-- watch me fall.

It's like-- coming out of my haze, to the rest of my days

feel the shimmering light cross the wicked tides

i am. full of an energy, beneath my stride-- keep me going, keep me on time--

coming out of my haze, I'm a million miles- from where i landed

Writing Prompt #6

For this prompt, share something you are working on... or something you have been wanting to work on but for whatever reason have not. Share your short story, your poems or new song, or even that book review you have been wanting to write. Just share!

Prompt 5

A.

I was my mother’s third. Third of seven. I came behind a character and an example. And the third time was not a charm for my mother. At one point, she says she shoved her nurse across the room for pressing on her stomach too hard. She was given a new drug, she said. She felt like she couldn’t find her control, she said. The third time, and yet so different. Unique circumstances, she said.

Fitting, too, because I was born a unique child. A girl with wild hair and a wild imagination. Different than the previous two… There was my brother, the goofball; born with his fist wrapped tightly around his geek flag. And my sister, the child-adult; who, like Athena, emerged fully grown and fully wise. And then there was me, a head-in-the-clouds child, chasing raindrops and talking to unicorns and laying on the carpet of my bedroom, arms outstretched, waiting for gravity to release, because I knew I was about to fly for the first time.

I have always understood this about myself. This unique, this dreamworld-y, this very different core that I own, that I keep glowing in my center. And, thanks to parents who declared my utter singularity in matter-of-fact tones lined with obvious affection, I was always secure in it. I loved it. I owned it.

But thirty years into life—in the middle of suburbia and motherhood and established adulthood—I wonder if others ever catch a glimpse of my singular core. I wonder if I am now, simply, not unlike every neighbor I greet on the sidewalk and every friend I chat with on the porch. And I think I am, now, simply one of them.

And I think now, thirty years into life, that because I am like everyone, everyone is like me. And this (despite what it looks like on the page here) is a hopeful thought. I begin to wonder if everyone is a raindrop-chaser and a dragon-hunter, a silver-blooded heart beater hoping to fly. I think they are. I think they live here, with me, in the middle of suburbia and parenthood and established adulthood, and share with me secret identities and curiosities. I am singular in a world of singularity. And I still look for the pale shimmer of unicorns when fog drops over the world.

B.

Herein lies the beauty—and the curse—of my same differences…. Or my different sameness (take your pick): My own rainbow-chasing story, like hers and his and theirs, is worthy of telling. I chase rainbows in my own particular way. And when I step into the woods and begin my dragon hunt, I am equipped with my own loyal sidekick, cynical minstrel and lurking villain. And it is their story too. And somehow… somehow…. I had better prove they are my own! I must own them wholly and completely and unabashedly. They cannot be Grimm’s or Andersen’s… or Bradbury’s or McCarthy’s or Valente’s.

And if my husband has come to hear my voice better than I hear it myself, then it is my own sidekick that weeps over my torn body at the end of the adventure, “but minimally, because your characters don’t over-emote in your writing.” And it is my own cynical minstrel that picks up bar wenches with charismatic pick-up lines “like ‘fancy’ and ‘tender’, because you couldn’t use a normal interjection, hon.” And it is my own lurking villain that springs the trap for me just before the story’s climax, “and let’s be honest, honey, he’d probably be wearing white instead of black, just to throw people off. And someone good will die. And your hero wouldn’t come out unscathed, because you don’t believe those heroes. And some things would be left unresolved. But you would never do a trilogy, honey, because you think…..”

And as these conversations almost always end in my home, my husband would say, “When are you just going to start?”

"When we write we are anthropologists of the soul--digging and digging 
until we've pieced together our personal mysteries."  
- C. Jane Kendrick (here)

7 pm

In response to writing prompt #4 & #5

I drive down the street, catching the sun winking at me from behind the trees.  There are sprinklers skittering across manicured lawns, an older couple walking a small, white dog, passed by joggers who are charging up on endorphins.  I pass apartment buildings, cul-de-sacs, and parks.  All well kept, because I live in Bountiful.  A city that is all crisp edges and as proper and upstanding as it's citizens.  It is the white collared cousin to blue collared Salt Lake City located only a scant 15 minutes south.  White picket fences, and carefully tended gardens are blooming with purple sylvia, pink lupine, and confetti-colored petunias.  There are blazing red flowers on a bush that I don't know the name of, but it is so full, that it is drooping under their weight.  The color becomes emblazoned in my mind's eye.  I become drunk with the rich golden light that is casting an amber glow on everything.  This is my favorite time of day, at this specific time of year: early summer, 7 pm.  There is nothing that compares to the leaves as they shine like polished jade from the light of the sun.  Or the long, dramatic shadows that are reaching across to gently close the valley's eyes for night.  

For some reason I can't explain, at this time of day I always smell the subtle, wild perfume of willows and water.  A scent that calms me.  I picture myself sitting on a river's edge with my feet submerged in an icy, tittering creek, daring myself to see how long I can stand the thrill it gives me.  I want to laugh.  I want to scream.  I am surrounded by a wild, verdant wood, alive and creaking, and murmuring secrets in my ear.  But mostly, it whispers a song from long ago.  A honeyed melody that floats past my ear, and splinters on a soft breeze.

"So won't you come with me where the wood willow grows,

And watch it meander slowly as the sky turns from light to dark?"

Finally the dregs of the day are gone as the sun is sipped below the horizon.   As I come back to myself, I am left only with the throaty sound of crickets as they sing a in a nearby field.

#5 Response

It really shouldn't be a hard question to answer: who am I? That is the sort of thing ones asks in high school and college, when everything is jumbled up and to feel lost just feels a little normal. But now? Still? And yet I am still not sure what really makes me… me. Slowly I find things out about myself that I didn't know (and some that I just didn't realize): I like working with soil and flowers, I am terrible at sticking to schedules and organization (though I wish I could), I love art, the mess in our house is primarily a product of my own laziness, I like bird watching and too much talking and interesting cooking. I see some of the roles I play and how they are a part of who I am: wife, mother, friend, companion, etc. Then I see things I wish I was; things that at this moment in my life I just can’t do. I can only be and do so much. Right now I am a baby maker, a one car family victim, a tired wife, a tired mama, a book reader (though not always a book finisher). Time will pass and those things will change. I will not always be pregnant and sick. I will not always have little ones here at home. Sometimes that gives me hope, though it breaks my heart too.

I truly feel that if I want to improve my writing, to find my own voice, and to be happy in where I am, I need to stop worrying about writing what I think other people want me to write. Instead to embrace the roles and places I am in my life RIGHT NOW. To let those things be part of my writing instead of pushing them away for one reason or another. Maybe then I wouldn't be at such a loss of what to write. Maybe then I would find the voice that is uniquely mine.

"Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper."

Ray Bradbury